University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2018 From Alienated To Connected: An Examination Of Religion In The Literature Of Su Xuelin, Bing Xin, And Xu Dishan Gina M. Elia University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Asian Studies Commons, English Language and Literature Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Elia, Gina M., "From Alienated To Connected: An Examination Of Religion In The Literature Of Su Xuelin, Bing Xin, And Xu Dishan" (2018). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2835. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2835 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2835 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. From Alienated To Connected: An Examination Of Religion In The Literature Of Su Xuelin, Bing Xin, And Xu Dishan Abstract The literature of Bing Xin 冰心 (birth name Xie Wanying 谢婉莹) (1900-1999), Su Xuelin 苏雪林 (1897-1999), and Xu Dishan 许地山 (1893-1941) concerning religiosity is dismissed in previous scholarship by C.T. Hsia, Lewis Robinson, Marian Galik, Chen Weihua, and Yang Jianlong as reflecting simply the personal experiences of the authors themselves rather than as political or social commentary. I argue for a reading of these three authors’ literature that acknowledges its efforts to engage with contemporaneous debates on the relationship of religion and modernization. Using close-reading and intertextual analysis, I argue that within the narratives of these three authors’ literature, identifying as religious or participating in religious cultural phenomena is for protagonists linked to cultivating the skill of focusing on the well-being of others.